Strike a Balance
by Sweet Disposition x
Summary: A story about the sun, the moon, the earth, and all their disharmony. Somehow, they always come out balanced. [Post-war, major spoilers. Team 7 feels and mild SasuSaku. Two-shot.]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Major spoilers ahead for the post-war era! This will be a two-shot, with the next part to be posted sometime in the near future (but probably not this week). Hope you all enjoy! Happy Thanksgiving (almost) to those of you who celebrate it.

* * *

Haruno Sakura is the one who grounds him.

Since receiving chakra from the Sage of Six Paths and sealing away a literal goddess, Sasuke has reached godlike levels among shinobi. To him, S-ranked missions are child's play. He doesn't think there's a soul alive, save Naruto, who would best him in a fight at this point.

Which is why it's a wonder that he's lying here, in this hospital bed with the starch-stiff sheets, his mind clouded by all the painkillers coming through his IV drip. He tries to rise, prop himself up on his elbows, but he finds that he can't move, so he thrashes around even harder, ripping out the Velcro ties that bind him to the bed. He hears the monitor next to him go off, _beep beep beep beep beep_ , incessant, but it barely registers in his mind. When a medic-nin finally enters the room, the only thing he can make out is the swirl of pink atop her head, neatly pulled into a bun. He breathes a sigh of relief.

"Sasuke-kun!" she cries. "What's the matter with you? Honestly, I leave for a second to use the restroom and you ruin all the hospital equipment before I get back. Figures."

"Sorry," he says groggily, before he knows the word has even left his lips.

At his apology, she visibly softens, and a small smile appears on her face. "That's okay. Since you're awake, you can sit up. I'm going to take your vitals."

She pulls at the bindings around his wrists, allowing him to get up comfortably. In his still-sleepy state, he notices that Sakura is wearing civilian clothes, not scrubs. Out of the corner of his right eye, he spots a plate of apples on the bedside table, half peeled and sliced and the other half still in the process. He feels a pang of guilt related to the apples, but he doesn't remember why, and the moment passes quickly.

In any case, it's clear that Sakura isn't even on duty. _Has she been staying here this whole time?_

He used to wonder why she stuck around for so long after he left Konoha the first time. Sometimes he thinks back to what Kakashi said about not needing a reason to love someone, but he's always had trouble believing his former sensei. Now it's simply an unresolved mystery, and one he prefers not to touch. She is too reckless with her love anyway if she thinks something so puny can change his set ways.

"Why am I here?" Sasuke asks. His mouth tastes bad. He thinks he remembers something about a mission with Naruto gone wrong, but the details are hazy.

"You'd have to ask Naruto or Kakashi. Something happened while the two of you were on a mission together, but I don't know what it was." While she talks in a low, soothing voice, she takes his pulse, her cool hands almost too cold against his clammy skin, and then his blood pressure. "Elevated heart rate and BP, but that's to be expected, I guess. Open up, please," she requests, and he complies obediently so she can stick a thermometer in his mouth.

If Sakura had known the mission details, she might have found it funny. A group of powerful criminal shinobi running a drug ring on the border of Fire Country needed to be taken down, and Naruto and Sasuke had been chosen for the job. The two of them against 24.

Those missing-nin stood no chance.

Still, Naruto had the bullheaded, imbecilic idea that he and Sasuke should compete seeing who could take out the most ninja with the least-ranked ninjutsu. Which meant no rasengan, no chidori, no Sharingan or senjutsu. And they'd gravely underestimated the opponent, of course.

Naruto had gotten off pretty much scot-free with a few thigh gashes and a black eye. The blonde was probably on a date with Hinata this very moment, milking his injuries for all they were worth so she'd give him sympathy kisses and the like.

Sasuke, on the other hand, had been immediately hospitalized with two broken ribs and a second-degree burn on his left shin. When he was brought in, Sakura panicked at first, thinking she would be losing him not to the darkness within but to forces she could have and should have stopped if she had been on the mission as well. The injuries were actually mild for a top-tier medic-nin like herself, but it didn't stop her from crying until her eyes were bloodshot and chafed that first night. Not that she would ever let anyone know.

His head pounds, and the bright lights and clinical whiteness of the hospital probably don't help. When he lifts a hand to massage his temple, trying to make the ache go away, it only gets worse. Sasuke feels as though his head is splitting, but he doesn't voice his pain. He never does that.

Sakura begins to re-dress his burn wound, and suddenly the hurt is shared between his head and his leg. But her healing chakra soothes the burn quickly until the pain subsides to a mere whisper. Then, even without him asking, she moves her hands to the top of his head, sending chakra through his skull until that feels all better as well.

Now he remembers why those apples made him feel guilty: Sakura has never stopped trying to be everything for him—teammate, friend, perfect caretaker. When she props up his leg so she can re-bandage it, he remembers the day he broke his ankle by-accident-but-not-really, and Itachi set and bandaged it before giving him a piggyback ride back home. His nii-san was his caretaker once upon a time, and he'd resented that even then because he wanted to gain Uchiha Fugaku's approval over his own brother.

It seemed that Sasuke was always throwing away someone who mattered for a goal that didn't, and Sakura deserved better.

"You were originally supposed to head to Suna after your mission, too," she tells him. "Make small talk with the Kazekage, drag Shikamaru back home … he's been there for at least a month by now, because, well, duh."

She giggles, and Sasuke has no idea why, but all of a sudden, he's filled with chagrin for allowing her to see him like this. So vulnerable. He feels naked, and it's not just because he's been sleeping with his shirt off.

"Okay, that's enough," he says, voice hardening. "Leave me alone now. Please."

"Sasuke-kun, I can't do that—"

"I said _get out_!" His volume rises, but if Sakura is hurt or shocked, she doesn't show it. Maybe she knows that he doesn't really mean all this anger that he can't ever seem to contain. That it's a physical manifestation of his shame.

"As a medical professional, and as your _friend_ , I'm going to need to stay here and monitor you a little longer," she tells him.

His dark eyes start to spin to red—not a voluntary reaction this time, just something that seems to happen when his adrenaline gets going—but that stops when he glances up into her eyes and is overwhelmed by the devotion he sees. There is pain in her gaze, he can tell, her eyebrows all knitted up in worry. At the same time, he cannot help but be comforted by the fondness in her eyes. They are precious gems: emerald and jade, peridot and adoration.

No, even better, they are the color of new growth, like little shoots that are determined to push their way up after even the harshest of winters. They will inevitably be wiped out by residual frost on their first night, but the call of the sun is too great to ignore. And then when spring really arrives, her namesake blossoms, those cherry flowers the same color as her hair, will fall to the ground in sprinkles, and villages everywhere will have a festival to celebrate.

So Uchiha Sasuke lets himself get lost in her green, green eyes, all anger forgotten. She takes his one good hand, the one that's probably repulsively moist, but hers feels cool and dry. They stay like that for a short while until she moves to peel another apple.

"Sakura, you shouldn't do this," he says. He hopes she realizes he doesn't just mean taking care of him as a patient, but that she understands the unspoken message. _I'll never feel the same way about you. I'll never stop leaving you. I'll never be good to you, or for you._

"But I want to, Sasuke-kun," she says simply. That's when he knows that she knows, and when he realizes that it doesn't matter to her. _I love you anyway._

After that, he lets her become the solid earth beneath his feet that holds him steady and promises new life, day after day.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** I'm so sorry for the late update. This is the second-part of this two-shot. I have no clue why I didn't write and post this last year, but I guess I'm still a little bit around. Thanks for all the feedback on my other two stories, guys. It means a lot to me. I'd like to continue writing, I think, if a good story comes to mind.

* * *

Naruto has never lost the sunny optimism of his genin years; his demeanor is as bright as his old orange jumpsuit.

The first time they spar together, really spar, not just doing practice stances, is after both their prosthetic arms are fully functional. They limit themselves to taijutsu, mostly, and the rasengan and chidori are both forbidden—they are not, after all, techniques meant to be used on teammates.

But Naruto being the Number One Hyperactive, Knucklehead Ninja and Sasuke having Uchiha fire running through his veins, the battle quickly becomes more intense than they first intended. Sasuke finds himself shooting out fireball after fireball in order to stop the onslaught of shadow clones coming at him in droves, but it seems that for each one he takes out, ten more take its place.

 _Is this idiot planning to pummel me to death?_ he wonders. He starts to feel claustrophobic, hordes of clones closing in from every direction. _There must be thousands of them._ He knows he is quick as ever, but the sheer numbers are overwhelming. And because Uchiha Sasuke, always second-best of the family, hates losing on principle, his bloodline limit activates without him really willing it to.

It's not malice or desire for revenge that sends a crackle of lightning running up his forearm, just instinct. But the sound of chirping birds makes Naruto stop all the same, eyes wide in shock, and he stands there dumbly. Sasuke wants to shout at him to get out of the damn way, but there's no time, and words refuse to leave his mouth anyway. Even with Naruto's fox agility, Sasuke's attack is already in motion, and the Uchiha has always been the faster of the two. His Sharingan is locked on the true target, and in his heart Sasuke knows he will not miss.

He plunges his arm deep into Naruto's torso, electricity crackling around the hole it forms, and every shadow clone disappears with a _poof_.

The effect is immediate and fatal. The light is already leaving those bright blue eyes, and even as he bleeds out on the training ground grass, Naruto fixes that same shocked expression on his best friend and brother.

"Sasuke … how could you? After everything, you still wish for my death?"

And as Sasuke watches the scene, it's like he's seeing it from the third person, watching some other black-haired boy clutching a still-warm body as Naruto's soul slips away. He can barely process what is happening.

"You betrayed us," the jinchuuriki says in a darker tone than Sasuke has ever heard. It's accusatory and unforgiving, exactly what Sasuke knows he deserves, but what the living Naruto would never tell him. "You destroyed the village. Your brother deserved better than a traitor like you. I deserved better than a friend like you." The boy glares at him, just briefly, before closing his eyes, unable to sustain himself any longer.

It is then that Sasuke finally finds his voice.

"Naruto!" he yells, his arm still embedded in the body, holding it upright. "Don't die on me! Naruto!" His voice breaks into a sob, because this is the kind of damage Sakura could not heal even if she were right there when it happened. He crashes to his knees, clutches his best friend closer as the world fades before his eyes.

To be a blind Uchiha is akin to rejecting the family. Every Sharingan user has near-perfect visual acuity when the bloodline limit is activated, allowing for the best possible perception of jutsus and other threats. But with each tear Sasuke spills, his vision darkens further until the only thing he can see is black. He can feel the soft dirt beneath his knees, but he cannot see it.

They started in broad daylight, and now it is as though the sun itself has been snuffed out.

 _A fitting punishment for my sins,_ Sasuke reasons. The unwavering warmth of the sun did not belong to brother-killers, after all.

* * *

When he awakes on the very same training ground, a very concerned pair of green eyes blinks at him.

"He's up, Naruto!" Sakura shouts.

 _Naruto?_

The blonde boy bounds over, almost puppylike in his excitement.

"Sasuke, you're awake! You were out for, like, half an hour! I had to get Sakura-chan from the hospital because you were screaming and everything. I didn't think I punched you that hard, but I think you blacked out or started hallucinating or—"

The jinchuuriki could have chattered on forever, but he's interrupted when Sasuke grabs his hand and pulls himself to his feet. Naruto, seizing the opportunity, pulls him back to the ground and piles on top of him, wrapping the Uchiha into a satisfied bear hug. Sasuke, wonder of wonders, lets him do so without grumbling, and Sakura, observing the curious situation, flops onto the ground next to both of her boys and joins the group hug.

"You're here," Sasuke says, so low that the other two almost miss it. He takes deep, calming breaths, his heart still pounding so heavy that he can hear the blood rushing in his ears. He hasn't felt this relieved in a long time.

"Of course we're here, dumbass!" Naruto whoops. "Where else could we possibly go?"

* * *

The rest of the day, Sasuke is surprisingly pleasant to be around, and neither Naruto nor Sakura can say they're upset by the change. When Naruto asks for them to get ramen for dinner as a team, and Sakura proposes a movie and a sleepover afterward, he doesn't even make them beg before agreeing.

Naruto and Sakura cast suspicious looks at each other, then shrug and smile. They'll take every day of a non-temperamental Uchiha they can get.

When they've had their fill at Ichiraku's, Teuchi thanks them for being his best customers as always, and they head to Sakura's apartment to spend the night. (Naruto's is too filthy, and the Uchiha complex is too grim.) Sakura has chosen some stupid comedy adventure to watch, and Sasuke knows he will not pay attention to a second of the low-brow entertainment that the other two love.

Still, he settles in the middle, flanked by Sakura (who he feels has been far too affectionate today) to his left, and on his right Naruto (who is somehow even more needy). Despite liking physical contact the least, Sasuke is always in the middle. He suspects the long years apart have made them cautious, so they've put him in the center so both of them can pin him down if he tries to leave. But right now he has no plans to leave Sakura's couch, let alone Konoha.

Settling under the blankets, Sakura scoots a bit closer to the Uchiha boy and gives him an overly forward kiss on the cheek for being so agreeable all day. This displeases him just enough to make him want another.

On his other side, Naruto goes in for a kiss on the cheek as well, and Sasuke, seeing the movement out of the corner of his eye, lifts his head to avoid the bad-breathed jinchuuriki. But his timing is bad.

"What the hell, dobe! You bit my chin!" Sasuke yells.

"YOU CHINNED MY TEETH!" Naruto shrieks back, his voice loud and shrill enough to make Sakura cover her ears.

But then he falls into a fit of giggles, unable to hold back at the sight of tooth marks on Sasuke's chin. Sasuke glares at him and cups his hurt chin tenderly, which looks so ridiculous it sends Sakura bursting into peals of laughter. The two laugh for ages at Sasuke's indignant face, completely missing every important scene in the movie, until Sasuke has to crack a smile at their antics.

The sight of Sasuke's upturned lips is so novel to Naruto and Sakura that it makes them stop laughing and stare at him for a moment. He can tell Sakura is burning the image into her memory to save for later, but Naruto is just glad to have him around.

"I love you, Sasuke," they say almost simultaneously.

The word _love_ has real meaning to Sasuke now, a meaning he spent his entire adolescence trying to forget. For a second, his thoughts are transported back home, his real home, where Uchiha Itachi is tickling him on a lazy Sunday morning until 5-year-old Sasuke begs him to stop. Fugaku gruffly tells the boys to get out of their parents' bed, and Mikoto, barely awake, asks them to wash up before breakfast.

This memory hurts to swallow and certainly too much to share, so instead of saying what he really means, all Sasuke says is, "I know," and smirks. His team will understand.

 _The moon is only the moon because of the pull of the earth and the reflected light of the sun,_ he realizes. All three of them need each other to survive, but perhaps him most of all. Uncharacteristically, he tosses his prosthetic arm over Naruto's shoulder, and Sakura wraps herself around his other side. There, they find some balance.


End file.
